We're Baaaack.....

I hope all of you had a great holiday. We're back. We're rested, sort of (the whole family caught a nasty virus in Jamaica). But we are ready to go ahead to a great 2007!

A very interesting article in this week's issue of the Madison+Vine newsletter, an interview with Magna Global's new head honcho Bill Hilary. Magna, as you may recall, is the leading agency in the world of branded entertainment. Anyway, I'm happy to include a quote from the interview, primarily because Hilary agrees with me.

You've talked about your interest in digital and multiplatform entertainment. Can you give some examples of how this could work for your clients and what some of your priorities are in that area? "Multiplatform entertainment is already happening in a big way and it is going to be huge. It's like an octopus. The body is the brand concept-content and the tentacles are the many varied ways of getting the message across to the consumer. The days of creating content solely for linear broadcast are over. Every project we are developing is designed to exist on many platforms. It opens so many more opportunities and ways to reach a more diverse range of consumer."

Saddam TV
The video of Saddam's execution, as captured by mobile phone camera, has by now been widely distributed on the Internet. One of the things that's extremely interesting about this is that the fact that you can hear the taunts and jeers of the crowd, something that was missing on the Iraqi government's official video. This says a tremendous amount about the power of citizen journalism or whatever you want to call it. The fact is that it's a tidal wave that is just getting bigger and bigger. The challenge for established media outlets is how they will use and edit it.

The cameras are getting better, both the lenses and the memories. It's getting easier to establish a link from mobile device to websites. NPD, a market research firm, reports that 2/3 of phones shipped in November, 2006 were video equipped as compared with just 49% percent the year before.

There's a very interesting article about it today's WSJ. Fox News and CNN. Fox is actually issuing Palm Treos to its correspondents, so they can start broadcasting from the moment they hit the ground. The WSJ article reports that CNN correspondent Nic Robertson used a two mega-pixel Nokia N90 camera phone to show his vehicle being attacked in Darfur.